Yes, there are two Americas’ Virginia, they exist as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist. One tolerant and broadminded, the other intolerant and narrow-minded!
Sincerely, thinkingblue, from the TOLERANT AND BROADMINDED USA
PS: Joe (You Lie) Wilson, et al reside in the other America!

Friday, September 09, 2005

This morning I turned on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman andJuan Gonzalez, they were talking about Juan’s article“Disaster used as political payoff” in the NY Daily Newsand it was a doozy! He had written about FEMA puttingOPERATION BLESSING as one of their Katrina Victim Charitiesto donate money to. I knew Pat Robertson’s was associatedwith this charity... but I didn’t know Michael Brown, headof FEMA would be so brazen as to list Robertson’s charity ontheir website.

If that wasn’t bad enough, Max Blumenthal called in on thephone and talked about his article “Pat Robertson's KatrinaCash” it can’t get any worse, I thought, but it did. BelowI have posted both writings and they are enough to make yourhair stand on end. Katrina not only exposed the dirtylittle secret of poverty… Now she has opened the doors tolet the stink out of all that goes on behind closed doors ofthe greedy leaders of the so-called Conservative ChristianRight Fundamentalist Movement. Amen. Thinking Blue

Every cloud has a silver lining. Hurricane Katrina hasdevastated New Orleans, leaving thousands dead and hundredsof thousands homeless, and plunging the entire city intochaos. In the hurricane's wake, the Federal EmergencyManagement Agency (FEMA) and its director, Michael Brown,forced out of his former job at the International ArabianHorse Association, with no credentials in disaster relief, have become targetsof withering criticism. Yet FEMA's relief efforts havebrought considerable assistance to at least one man whostands to benefit from Hurricane Katrina perhaps more thanany other individual: Pat Robertson. (Yes folks, Pat Robertson our all American nitwit - Thinking Blue)

With the Bush Administration's approval, Robertson's $66million relief organization, Operation Blessing, hasbeen prominently featured on FEMA's list of charitable groups accepting donations forhurricane relief. Dozens of media outlets, including the New York Times,CNN and the Associated Press, duly reprinted FEMA'slist, unwittingly acting as agents soliciting cash forRobertson. "How in the heck did that happen?"Richard Walden, president of the disaster-reliefgroup Operation USA, asked of Operation Blessing's inclusionon FEMA's list. "That gives Pat Robertson millions of extra dollars." Though Operation USA has conducted disaster relief formore than twenty-five years on five continents, like scoresof other secular relief groups currently helping victims ofHurricane Katrina, it was omitted from FEMA's list. In fact,only two non-"faith-based" organizations were included. (One of them, the AmericanRed Cross, is being blocked from entering New Orleans by FEMA's parentagency, the Department of Homeland Security.) FEMA,meanwhile, has reportedly turned away Wal-Mart trucks carrying food and water tothe stricken city, teams of firemen from Maryland and Texas,volunteer morticians and a convoy of 1,000 boat owners offering to help rescue stranded flood victims. While relief efforts falter in the face of colossalbureaucratic incompetence, the Bush Administration'spromotion of Operation Blessing has ensured that thefloodwaters swallowing New Orleans will be a rising tidelifting Robertson's boat.

Robertson recently ignited a media firestorm when he called for the assassination of Venezuelan presidentHugo Chávez during a broadcast of The 700 Club. Hehas also blamed the 9/11 attacks on America's tolerance ofabortion and homosexuality and declared the Supreme Court agreater threat to the United States than Al Qaeda. Robertsonassiduously cultivates his celebrity with remarks likethese, casting himself as a divisive bigot to his foes and arighteous prophet to his allies in Christian right circles.But there is much more to Robertson than theheadline-grabbing hothead he plays on TV.

Far from the media's gaze, Robertson has used thetax-exempt, nonprofit Operation Blessing as a front for hisshadowy financial schemes, while exerting his influencewithin the GOP to cover his tracks. In 1994 he made anemotional plea on The 700 Club for cash donations toOperation Blessing to support airlifts of refugees from theRwandan civil war to Zaire (now Congo). Reporter BillSizemore of The Virginian Pilot later discovered thatOperation Blessing's planes were transporting diamond-miningequipment for the African Development Corporation, aRobertson-owned venture initiated with the cooperation ofZaire's then-dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.

After a lengthy investigation, Virginia's Office ofConsumer Affairs determined that Robertson "willfullyinduced contributions from the public through the use ofmisleading statements and other implications." Yet when theoffice called for legal action against Robertson in 1999,Virginia Attorney General Mark Earley, a Republican,intervened with his own report, agreeing that Robertson hadmade deceptive appeals but overruling the recommendationfor his prosecution. Two years earlier, while Virginia'sinvestigation was gathering steam, Robertson donated35,000to Earley's campaign--Earley's largestcontribution. With Earley's report came a sense ofvindication. "From the very beginning," Robertson claimed,"we were trying to provide help and assistance to thosewho were facing disease and death in the war-torn, chaoticnation of Zaire."

(Earley is now president of Prison Fellowship Ministries, an evangelical social-workorganization founded by born-again, former Nixon dirty-trickster Charles Colson. PFM has accepted White House faith-based-initiative money and iscurrently engaged in hurricane relief efforts in Louisiana.Earley remains a close ally of Robertson.)

Absolved of his sins, Robertson dug his heels back inAfrican soil. In 1999 he signed an $8 million agreement withLiberian tyrant Charles Taylor that guaranteed Robertson's Freedom Gold Ltd.

--an offshore company registered to the same address as hisChristian Broadcasting Network--mining rights in Liberia, and gave Taylor a 10 percent stake in the company.(meaning they were business partners TB) Whenthe United States intervened in Liberia in 2003, forcingTaylor and the Al Qaeda operatives he washarboring to flee, Robertson accused President Bush of"undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring inMuslim rebels to take over the country."

Robertson's scheming hasn't abated one bit. He isaccused of violating his ministry's tax-exempt,nonprofit status by using it to market a diet shake helicensed this August to the health chain General NutritionCorp. (Robertson continues toadvertise the shake on his personal website.) He haswithstood criticism from fellow evangelicals for investing...

520,000in a racehorse named Mr. Pat, violating biblical admonitionsagainst gambling. He was even accused of "Jim Crow-styleracial discrimination" by black employees who successfullysued his Christian Coalition in 2001 for forcing them enterits offices through a back door and eat in a segregated area(Robertson has since resigned).

The Bush Administration has studiously overlookedRobertson's misdeeds. In October 2002, just months after hedenounced the White House's faith-based initiative as "areal Pandora's box"--and one month before midtermelections--Robertson pocketed ...500,000in government grants to Operation Blessing. Since then, withthe sole exception of his criticism of the US interventionin Liberia, Robertson has served as a willing surrogate forthe Administration. His Regent University gave John Ashcrofta cushy professorship to cool his heels after hiscontentious tenure as US Attorney General. And Robertson'slegal foundation, the American Center for Law and Justice,is spearheading the effort to rally right-wing Christiansupport for Judge John G. Roberts Jr's confirmation as ChiefJustice of the Supreme Court.

Now, as fallout from the President's handling ofHurricane Katrina threatens to derail the GOP's long-termagenda, Robertson is back at the plate for Bush, echoing theWhite House's line that state and local authorities--andeven the disaster victims themselves--are to blame for thetragedy engulfing New Orleans.

The September 5 edition of The 700 Clubincluded a report by Christian Broadcasting Networkcorrespondent Gary Lane from outside the ruined New OrleansConvention Center, which had housed mostly impoverishedblack disaster victims throughout the weekend. "A number ofpossessions left behind suggest the mindset of some of theevacuees," Lane said. "They include this voodoo cup with thesaying, 'May the curse be with you.' " A shot of a plasticsouvenir cup from one of New Orleans's countless trinketshops appeared on the screen. "Also music CDs with thetitles Guerrilla Warfare and Thugs 'R' Us,"Lane stated, pointing out a pile of rap CDs strewn on theground. (This is the most disrespectful, contemptuous bit of information Ihave learned to date...demonizing the poor victims of this horrible storm to further their outrageously bigoted agenda...These people are beyond despicable, they are a black-hearted, contemptible, evil-minded, fiendish bunch and most of all, gluttonous beyond imagination. Why so many people can not see through their schemes is an unbelievable mockery to the intelligence of the human being. - TB) .

The 700 Club's featured guest was WellingtonBoone, a black minister invited by Robertson to provide acounterpoint to the ubiquitous Rev. Jesse Jackson. Boone isa member of the Coalition on Revival, a Christian Reconstructionistorganization that advocates replacing the US Constitutionwith biblical law. Throughout his career, he hasdistinguished himself from his black clerical colleagueswith such remarks as "I believe that slavery, and theunderstanding of it when you see it God's way, wasredemptive" and "The black community must stopcriticizing Uncle Tom. He is a role model."

Uncle Tom

(t¼m)n. Offensive. A Black person who is regarded as beinghumiliatingly subservient or deferential to white people.[After Uncle Tom, a character in Uncle Tom'sCabin, a novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe.]

Though Boone's appearance on The 700 Clubconsisted mostly of benign appeals for "laser-beam prayer,"CBN featured a separate interview with Boone on its website in which hedeclared, "We need to consider the culture of thosepeople still stranded in New Orleans. The looting ofproperty, the trashing of property, et cetera, speaksto the basic character of the people." He added, "These people who have gone through slavery, segregation andthe Voting Rights Act are doing this to themselves."

Boone's appearance on The 700 Club had beenpreceded by an interview with Operation Blessing PresidentBill Horan. Horan discussed his group's activities inBiloxi, Mississippi, where it plans to set up a mobilekitchen, and in Houston, Dallas and Beaumont, Texas, whereit is disbursing cash grants to numerous, mostly unspecifiedmega-churches, purportedly to support their work withevacuated hurricane victims.

As for the people still stranded in New Orleans who "are doing this to themselves," as Boone said, OperationBlessing has a special plan: avoid them like the plague."I've actually heard reports that they [the people ofMississippi] were in worse trouble" than those in NewOrleans, claimed Gordon Robertson, the son of Pat Robertsonand vice president of The 700 Club. "They wereactually harder hit."

"Oh, absolutely," agreed Horan.

At the segment's conclusion, Gordon Robertson askedHoran, "What can people do today? If you were asking forhelp today, what's the number-one need?"

"It's cash. Cash is what we need more than anything,"Horan pleaded. "The more cash we get, the more goodwe can do." And the Bush Administration, through FEMA,is doing its best to insure that Pat Robertson is getting that cash just as quickly as humanly possible. (kA-CHING, kA-CHING GOES THE LINED POCKETS OF THE PAT ROBERTSON'S BRAND OF MONEY GRUBBERS! - TB)~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Below is the last paragraph of an interview of Howard Zinn by "Tomdispatch"....you can click on the link for the full interview. I've often thought about civilian casualities resulting from the use of these smartass bombs. The general feeling of most of the "Hawks" I've talked to is that there is very little "collateral damage" inflicted by our smartass bombs, and they seem to revel in this idea that this nation is capable of only killing the bad guys with very limited damage to civilians. Vietnam comes to mind, and I think of the chant "Hey Hey LBJ, How many kids you kill today".(They may have been talking about young draftees, but it applied just as much to civilians). LBJ escalated the war in Vietnam with the lie of "The gulf of Tonkin". He was another Texan gunslinger who felt that this great nation could never be defeated by a backward country such as Vietnam. He was wrong then, and we are wrong now. I read Zinn's book "A People's History of the United States", and often think what might happen to our collective conscious as a nation, if this book were required reading in the High School and College.

FRANK - LOYAL RESISTANCE ------------------------------------

ZINN : I also came to the conclusion that, given the technology of modern warfare, war is inevitably a war against children, against civilians. When you look at the ratio of civilian to military dead, it changes from 50-50 in World War II to 80-20 in Vietnam, maybe as high as 90-10 today. Do you know this Italian war surgeon, Gino Strada? He wrote Green Parrots: A War Surgeon's Diary. He was doing war surgery in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other places. Ninety percent of the people he operated on were civilians. When you face that fact, war is now always a war against civilians, and so against children. No political goal can justify it, and so the great challenge before the human race in our time is to solve the problems of tyranny and aggression, and do it without war. [He laughs quietly.] A very complex and difficult job, but something that has to be faced -- and that's what accounts for my becoming involved in antiwar movements ever since the end of World War II. Copyright 2005 Tomdispatch ------------------------------------ Click on the link below for full story. <http://www.tomdispatch.com/indexprint.mhtml?pid=20715>

About Me

Yes, there are two Americas’ Virginia, they exist as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist. One tolerant and
free-thinking, the other intolerant and close-minded!
Sincerely, thinkingblue, from the TOLERANT AND FREE-THINKING USA
PS: Joe (You Lie) Wilson, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh et al reside in the intolerant America!